Monday, September 24, 2012

I made another denim quilt with jeans that were given to me. First step was making the denim circles. Yes, I just draw lots of circles and then cut. Yes, I know about the rotary circle cutter that eliminates the drawing and just does the cutting. I'm cheap! And this works!

I spent some time playing with the arrangement of the denim. A game of dots!

Started sewing the circles together.

Decided to add doggie paws to dress up the back of the quilt.

My mom had sent me some pretty red fabric that I decided to use for this quilt, but then I realized that all those red squares just looked too boring. I needed another color square for the red circles. So, I dug around in my stash of fabrics and found a yellow.

And then the marathon sewing started. I used the Singer 224 and the Singer 201 for this project.

Did something different for the binding on this quilt. I added a yellow border strip to top of quilt to add an additional decorative look to the binding. This is a two inch folded strip of fabric that is added on top. The binding was attached to back and the folded over to top and stitched down with the decorative stitching. I like this look!

Front and back of finished quilt. This quilt will be one of my donation quilts for the year. My son's school is having a silent auction. This will be my contribution for the event.

Saturday, September 22, 2012

One of my favorite foods is natto. It's stringy. It's fermented.
They say it's an acquired taste, but in my opinion you either like it or you don't. Natto is made from soybeans fermented with bacillus subtilis. The Japanese like to eat natto for breakfast on top of rice. No Special K or Cheerios for them; their mornings start with a rich diet of healthy protein. I like to eat my natto with a fried egg, soy sauce, and grits. An East meets West recipe. This is what I had for breakfast today...yummy!

Natto can be purchased in an Asian grocery store here in the States. It comes in a cute packaging that has soy sauce and mustard that is stirred into the natto before eating.

Saturday, September 8, 2012

I awoke to a chilly kitchen this morning since I left the windows open last night in the kitchen. The chilliness is a hint that Autumn is just around the corner. So, I made popovers to quickly warm up the kitchen and satisfy my craving.

Popovers
1 popover pan or muffin pan
Oven 425
Mix 1 cup of flour, 3 eggs, 1 cup of milk with whisk, but don't over mix.
Heat pan for 2-3 minutes, take out and place a slab of butter at bottom to melt.
Fill prepared pan half way and bake for 10-15 minutes.
Serve with your favorite jams or apple butter.
Snatch them while they are hot and before they sink.
Enjoy!

Thursday, September 6, 2012

Just out of the dryer, a wrinkled Link! This time, I quilted this lap size quilt mainly in the ditch minus the corners. All quilting was done with the Davis NVF. The binding is leftover red and blue fabrics with an arrowhead decorative stitch from my Singer 224. This quilt doesn't have the spotlight rays running across Link like the mini wall quilt that I had made for my son a couple of weeks ago. The rays on this quilt extend out from the corners and end at the colored squares.

After comparing the two differently quilted Link quilts, I can state that prefer the smaller (first quilt) quilt's look with the rays across Link. I just love the abstract appearance of the quilting lines against the pixel squares since the quilting gives a feel of Link being captured. Plus, the back of the quilt has a much more interesting pattern than this quilts back.

Wednesday, September 5, 2012

You're looking at it! I spent the day learning how to navigate the new Blogger format. Yes, I'm one of the last to convert over to the new format. For a very short period of time, I had made the dutiful change, but got frustrated with figuring out the format. So I just went back to using the old format, but today I decided to take the time to learn the new format. I played with color options and templates for hours. I went from a deep purple to this much softer blue background, and I finally found the location of the readers list. One can easily get lost! Well, I conquered that project; now, I'm off to finish LINK.

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Welcome to my blog

Hello!I'm a mom that loves to quilt, garden, collect vintage sewing machines, and travel the world. Besides my love of quilting, I enjoy collecting vintage sewing machines and treadling. All of my machines that I use for quilting are in treadles! I also enjoy evenings reading other quilters blogs when not quilting or virtually touring the world. I thank many wonderful quilters for sharing their techniques, favorite fabrics, tutorials, and finished quilts. From their wealth of information, I have learned so much and enjoy learning more. -Monica